AUSTRALIAN feminist Germaine Greer has refused to back down from fiery claims that transgender women are ‘not real women’ and accusing Caitlyn Jenner of misogyny for trying to steal the limelight from the females in the Kardashian clan.
Now, Greer’s explosive views have steered a public punch-on between those defending freedom of expression and those outraged by her ‘harmful’ remarks on transgender people.
In an interview with the BBC’s Newsnight to defend her views amid cries to cancel her upcoming lecture at the University of Cardiff, Greer said misogyny played a large role in the rumoured decision by Glamour magazine to award Jenner with its Woman of the Year title.
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| Ruffling feathers ... Germaine Greer has been making controversial remarks about transgender women for many years.Source:Supplied |
“I think misogyny plays a really big part in all of this, that a man who goes to these lengths to become a woman will be a better woman than someone who is just born a woman,” Greer said.
“It seems to me that what was going on there was that he/she wanted the limelight that the other, female, members of the family were enjoying and has conquered it.”
The Female Eunuch author labelled claims she was inciting violence against the transgender community as “absolute nonsense”.
“I’m not saying people shouldn’t be allowed to go through that procedure, what I’m saying is that doesn’t make them a woman. It happens to be an opinion not a prohibition.”
Greer, 76, believed many cisgender females felt, like her, that transgender women were not women because they did not “look like, sound like or behave like” real women.
Greer scoffed at accusations she was being hurtful.
“People are hurtful to me all the time. Try being an old woman. For goodness sake, people get hurt all the time, I’m not about to walk on egg shells.”
She also said she would be prepared to use female pronouns for transgender women if it was their preference, only “as a courtesy”.
More than 2200 people have so far signed a petition calling on Cardiff University to dump Greer’s lecture scheduled for November 18, titled ‘Women & Power: The Lessons of the 20th Century’. A counter-petition has also gained ground, attracting more than 2100 signatures.
Greer, who denies the existence of transphobia, has become known for her controversial views on transgender women. Earlier this year she suggested transgender women could never be women because they did not know what it was like to have a “big, hairy, smelly vagina”. In 2009 she wrote
that transgender women were like ghastly parodies and were simply “a man’s delusion”.
“Greer has demonstrated time and time again her misogynistic views towards trans women,” the anti-Greer petition explains.
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